From all quarters, we hear alarm about the state of our infrastructure. We hear demands for heavy spending to dig trenches, lay rail, pave roads, build bridges, and deepen ports. Without these investments, we are warned, we will lose economic competitiveness, degrade our quality of life, and invite physical calamity.

Lucky for the country, it is a false alarm; a specious crisis. Yes, we suffer deficiencies that require spending. Worse, we suffer cynical exaggerations from politicians; intellectual complacency within the media; shameful gimmicks in public budgets; and persistent inefficiency in public management. Fix these latter problems while increasing investment modestly, and we will be on course for a transportation system that is clean, safe, efficient, and affordable.

Independents are growing as a portion of the electorate. They will decide the coming presidential election. Yet they wield little influence in the primaries and processes that determine candidates and platforms. Dismayed with the options presented to them, they strengthen conviction in their independence, thereby weakening their say upon candidates and platforms even further. Their rising disaffection brings increasing disenfranchisement.

What are the independents seeking? And how might they escape their plight?

The Modern Campus

Our college campuses have become citadels of indulgence and intolerance. Students are coddled, not challenged; infantilized, not toughened. They obsess over past injustices and devote themselves to identity politics. They present demands not for equal rights under the law, as was the cause of a previous generation of student activists, but for equal outcomes in society, as is ever the cause of modern totalitarian regimes.

For what should we be thankful?

We enjoy remarkable prosperity and liberty. We possess economic opportunity, personal freedom, and physical safety to an extent unrivaled in human history. We advance steadily against social injustice.

We have this life in large part because of the ideas and institutions that we received from our Founding Fathers. We have it as well because of the institutions and values that we share as members of Western civilization.

Who is the partisan independent?

He or she is the “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” voter who, dismayed with both the Democratic and Republican parties, disavowals partisan allegiance. This independent position may come with a sense of pride; may come with a sense of despair. Howsoever it comes, it comes with sufficient frequency that these voters compose a distinct segment within the electorate. They are, in the parlance of the professional pollsters, the “persuadables.”